Summer Reading
Recently, a second grade teacher told me that every year the first grade teachers in her school reported inaccurate and inflated reading levels for her incoming students.
I doubt this is really what is happening. Students are experiencing summer loss between leaving first grade and entering second grade in the fall. Summer reading loss has been well documented. Many research studies have shown that the reading proficiency levels of students from lower-income families decline over the summer months, while the reading proficiency levels of students from middle-income families improves modestly. Between first and sixth grade, this can compound to 1.5 years' worth of reading development lost in the summer months alone (Cooper, Nye, Charlton, Lindsay, & Greathouse, 1996).
What can you do about to prevent summer reading loss?
If possible, advocate for summer reading programs for your students. When this isn’t possible, try to set up opportunities that will make it easier for parents to get books for their children to read.
- Ask the local library if you could select and set aside books that would be good for parents to check out for their children.
- Arrange times for parents and children to visit you at school (one-to-two times each month) and borrow books from your classroom.
- See if you can get a grant or funding from your PTO to buy books for your students for the summer.
- Provide students with a special bag of books to read over the summer. Email them every week or so to find out if they are reading. Ask them to write back.
- Provide students with a book log. Meet back up with them in the fall and have some sort of reward for reading and logging books read.
One or more of these activities could make all the difference for your students.
If you have other ideas that have worked for you, please share them here with our readers!
Michèle Dufresne is author of many Pioneer Valley Books early readers (including the Bella and Rosie series), Word Solvers (Heinemann), and an early literacy and literacy intervention consultant.
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